Auction Catalogue

10 & 11 May 2017

Starting at 11:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Live Online Auction

Download Images

Lot

№ 876 x

.

11 May 2017

Hammer Price:
£90

British War Medal 1914-20 (Capt. D. B. Mac Lean.) nearly extremely fine £70-90

M.C. London Gazette 22 September 1916:
‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during operations, He worked incessantly, attending the wounded in the open, with practically no rest for three days, under heavy shell and machine gun fire. His keenness and bravery inspired the stretcher-bearers.’


Dugald Black MacLean was born in in Owen Sound, Ontario, and was educated at Paisley Public School, Owen Sound Collegiate Institute, and the University of Toronto, where he was captain of the Senior Medics Association Football XI which won the University’s Interfaculty Cup in 1912 and played for the University’s Varsity soccer team. Graduating as a Doctor of Medicine in 1913, he was commissioned Lieutenant in the Canadian Army Medical Corps in June 1915, transferring to the Royal Army Medical Corps upon arriving in England. He proceeded to France in July 1915 with the 48th Field Ambulance, and was promoted Captain in July 1916. That same month he was assigned to the 8th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment as their Medical Officer, and took part in the attack on Pozières on 15 July 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. The Battalion suffered 365 officers and men killed, wounded, and missing, and no doubt the medical assistance that he provided under shell fire in terrible conditions saved the lives of many of the wounded who would otherwise have perished without medical aid. For his gallantry he was recommended for the Distinguished Service Order. Fate, however, intervened, and before the award could be gazetted he was killed in action near Loos on the 29 August 1916, receiving instead the Military Cross (the D.S.O. cannot be awarded posthumously). He is buried in Philosophe British Cemetery, France.

Sold together with a photographic image of the recipient.